hours of operation, availability, or access. The subject of the listing could make it static or keep it as current as the subject choose with new information. A map presented for each listing pinpointed its location within the community and could be expanded or contracted via a zoom device activated by the reader. Use of this site enabled travelers to identify and locate artists, museums, performances, galleries, shows, art schools, and local teachers for classes, as well as finding individual art studios. It was useful to artists who were traveling also, as they could find professional peers and supply businesses wherever they happened to be or planned to visit, by using any connection to the World Wide Web. Development history The Arts Map site was created as a beta version late in 2009 that was launched on the Internet in mid-January 2010 and, without promotion, by May 2010 it had drawn four thousand listings with sixty-five countries represented in the listings. Listings were expected to rise gradually as knowledge of the site disseminated among artists, art patrons, curators, museums, schools, and supply businesses. In September 2010 the developers announced that the listings had risen to six thousand listings representing eighty countries. The founders of the site, Robin Colodzin and Jonathan Talbot, intended it to be a resource which would benefit the entire arts community and that inclusion of all who wished to list was its goal, basic listings were free for artists, art museums, art schools, and art organizations. Plans exist to enable the presentation of event schedules. Closure By October 2013 The Arts Map had grown to include more than nine thousand listings in one hundred and seven countries, but despite that and the accolades garnered, the effort required to maintain the site "consumed more time and creative energy" than its founders had anticipated and they closed the site, replacing it with an announcement thanking all who had participated in the project. The announcement ended with the words, "We are in our studios making art." External links The Arts Map References Art websites Business of visual arts